Wednesday, August 8, 2007

14 years back I read an article about sea water desalination plant which works on the temperature difference that exists between deep and shallow waters, but I wondered why no one is putting these ideas to practice in spite of drinking water problems in many parts of the world. Recently while digging for information related to Setu Samudram project I happened to read about NIOT’s desalination project (Low Temperature Thermal Desalination) in kavaratti based on the temperature gradient of the sea waters.
LTTD works something like this the warm ocean waters from the surface are evaporated in low pressure containers and the cold waters from the deep oceans are used to cool the vapours. With a heat engine electricity can also be generated from the water vapours.
I feel this technology is better alternative to silicon based solar harnessing technologies which requires huge surface areas for solar panels.
http://www.niot.res.in/Desalination/main.php